Hillary Clinton's lawyer had 'top secret' clearance

Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney David Kendall says he had a “top secret” security clearance granted by the State Department in order to review information related to the House Benghazi investigation, but a senior Republican senator insists that clearance didn’t give the lawyer authority to hold Clinton’s most sensitive emails.

For weeks, Republican lawmakers such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley have raised questions and demanded information about Kendall’s authority to access portions of Hillary Clinton’s emails that the State Department has determined are classified. State officials previously confirmed that Clinton’s attorneys had a clearance but did not name the lawyers.

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In a new letter to Grassley, Kendall says he got a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance from the Justice Department in November 2013 and a Top Secret clearance from the State Department about a year later. Kendall says his Williams & Connolly law partner, Katherine Turner, also got a Top Secret clearance from State in December 2014.

“These State Department security clearances remain active. We obtained them in order to be able to review documents at the Department of State, to assist former Secretary Clinton in preparing to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi,” Kendall wrote on Monday.

The letter adds more detail to public knowledge about the clearances for Clinton’s lawyers, but it is unlikely to silence complaints from Clinton’s critics about mishandled classified information. Clearances, especially Top Secret ones, are normally granted in connection with specific matters and do not entitle recipients to all information classified at that level, absent an agency’s determination that an individual has a “need to know.”

Kendall called issuance of the State Department clearances “unrelated” to the roughly 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to her former agency from her personal server and account last December. “As I am sure you are aware, it was not until nearly six months later, that the first email in this group was retroactively classified as ‘Secret,’” Kendall wrote.

In a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State John Kerry, Grassley said Kendall’s clearance was inadequate because the intelligence community recently determined that at least two messages on Clinton’s server contained information classified at the “TS/SCI” level. The State Department disputes those classifications and has requested a review by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

“Neither Mr. Kendall nor Ms. Turner have a security clearance at a sufficient level to be a custodian of TS/SCI material. Thus, it appears Secretary Clinton sent TS/SCI material to unauthorized persons,” Grassley wrote. On Tuesday, the senator’s office released his letter as well as Kendall’s.

Responding to a query from Grassley earlier this month, Kendall said his law firm “followed the guidance provided by the Department of State” about how to handle a thumb drive containing backup copies of Clinton’s messages. Kendall said in a letter to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) earlier this month that he received a safe from the State Department on July 8 to secure the thumb drive.

On Aug. 6, Kendall turned over the thumb drive to the Justice Department “voluntarily” in response to its request.

Grassley noted that TS/SCI information must usually be held in a special facility set up for that purpose — standards that a law office is unlikely to meet.

“It appears the FBI has also determined that Mr. Kendall and Ms. Turner’s clearance was not sufficient to maintain custody of the emails. … It appears that in addition to not having an adequate security clearance, Mr. Kendall and Ms. Turner also did not have the appropriate tools in place to secure the thumb drives. Even with the safe, there are questions as to whether it was an adequate mechanism to secure TS/SCI material,” Grassley wrote. He asked Kerry to answer questions about why Kendall and Turner were granted clearances.

Grassley’s letter also asks whether the security clearances of Clinton, Kendall or Turner have been suspended as a result of the intelligence community inspector general’s decision to refer to the FBI for review a possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Kendall reportedly got the Justice Department clearance in connection with his representation of former CIA Director David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of mishandling classified information. Grassley’s letter to Kerry asks when that clearance was “terminated.”

A State Department spokesman did not immediately respond to Grassley’s questions or to queries about the clearances for Clinton or her attorneys. In March, Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy gave Kendall written permission to retain copies of the emails Clinton turned over to State last year. However, Kennedy said that decision might have to be revisited if it was determined that the messages contained classified information.

Clinton is expected to testify publicly before the Benghazi panel on Oct. 22. Two of her top former aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, are expected to appear next week for private interviews by the committee.